Daf Yomi Notes

Thursday, April 3, 2014

This past week your humble blogger was drafted into the Israel Defense Forces. Thanks to the generous time the army gives religious soldiers for davening, I've been able to keep up with the daf, using one of the two sets of Shas in the shul on the base. The volume from the set I prefer is often taken by someone else, so I sometimes make do with the other set. Amazing!

Today I volunteered to clean the shul for Shabbat. The rabbi of the base doesn't have much work for me but wants me to be available (or to have it easy) so I've been sitting in shul several hours now until he comes back. Thanks to him I'm back on this blog for the first time in many months. I'm typing on my phone, so please excuse the typos and lack of formatting.

The Gemara on today's daf, Beitsa 4b, discusses whether an egg hatched on the first day of Rosh Hashana can be eaten on the second day. Rav and Shmuel consider the two days to be a single period of holiness, and so the egg is forbidden. They prove this from the fact that in the days of the Temple, the second day of Rosh Hashanah would be holy even if witnesses came toward the end of the first day and it became the first of Tishrei. But Rabba says that after Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai changed this law, Rosh Hashanah became two separate days of holiness. Rav Yosef counters that the unity of the two days didn't change with Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai, because it was "a matter that was decided by a gathering of Sages, and any matter that is decided by a vote needs another vote to undo it."

Rav Yosef said: How do I know this? From that which is written: "Go tell them: Return to your tents [i.e., your wives]" (Deut. 5:26).

This is not the first time that the daf was eerily confluent with my life. I didn't say so on this blog, but that other example was a date with Fran.

Rav Yosef refers here to when God forbid the men of Israel to sleep with their wives for three days before the giving of the Torah. Rav Yosef interprets a verse as giving the men explicit permission to return after the giving of the Torah, even though the original command to abstain expired.

Tosafot cite an opinion (apparently Rashi) that proves from this that a decree with a built time limit still applies when the time is up, until the decree is formally revoked. Tosafot reject this, reading the three days in the verse as not being a condition on the command.

The Meiri has an interesting hiddush, cited in Mesivta. When the reason of a decree no longer applies, it needs a gathering of sages to repeal it, but unlike the usual requirement for a repeal, the latter gathering can be smaller than the original gathering.

I haven't seen the Meiri inside to see how he gets to this, but it fits both the words and the logic well. The wording here is that the gathering need to "undo" the original decree, whereas in general, the gathering "annuls" the decree, as stated in Megillah 2a:

אין ב"ד יכול לבטל דברי ב"ד חבירו אא"כ גדול ממנו בחכמה ובמנין

It's as though in this case, the door is unlocked and just needs someone to turn the handle. Whereas in general, you need someone to unlock the door, using the same key that locked it.

Thank you to my wonderful wife waiting for me at home for her help in publishing this post, just an example of all the support I'm blessed to have from her.

Rabbi Yohanan said: A circular window needs 24 tefahim in its circumference. And two plus a bit from those need to be within ten [tefahim from the ground], so that if you make a square, some of it will be within ten.

Monday, May 20, 2013

Chapters 6 through 8 of Eruvin mainly discuss the details of eruvei hatserot, the joining of courtyards.

Mide-orayta, a courtyard is a private domain, so there is no Torah prohibition to carry between a courtyard and its houses. But there is a rabbinic prohibition to carry into the courtyard unless all members of the courtyard joining an eruv. (Eruv, according to Wyatt Cenac, is the Hebrew word for “loophole.”)

The Gemara on Eruvin 21b attributes this law to King Solomon, with approval from Heaven:

Wednesday, May 8, 2013

Last night I made plans to go to Zedekiah's Cave today, near Damascus Gate in Jerusalem. It's pretty cool. Literally cool, actually – it's a nice temperature down there out of the sun. The inside of the cave has an area of about two football fields ("football" still means "American football" to this oleh hadash) and averages the height of a four-story building. Who knew that such a huge, quiet space exists down there under the Arab markets?

So that's one thing I did today on Jerusalem Day. And guess what? By total coincidence, the cave is also mentioned on today's daf, Eruvin 61b!

Tuesday, April 23, 2013

The third through fifth chapters of Massekhet Eruvin discuss the laws of eruvei tehumin, "merging of boundaries." On Shabbat you may not leave your tehum, or boundary, defined by your location at the onset of Shabbat or by a designated eruv. You get your full domain, such as your city, plus two thousand amot beyond your domain.

Rabbi Akiva gives Numbers 35:5 as a biblical source for a tehum Shabbat of two thousand amot. It happens to be a pasuk dear to ba'alei keri'ah for its karnei parah. Thanks to this mishnah, the concept of biblical tehumin is referred to throughout the Bavli as tehumin aliba de-Rabbi Akiva. Rabbi Eliezer son of Rabbi Yosei ha-Galili reads the verse differently, and the Gemara on 30b explains the dispute as based on whether tehumin are de-orayta or de-rabbanan.

There other tanna'im quoted in the Bavli who say that tehumin are de-orayta, such as Rabbi Hiyya on Eruvin 17b and Rabbi Meir on Eruvin 35b.

How widespread is this view in the Gemara? We have a mahloket rishonim.

But there is more than one Havdalah: Havdalah in Shemonah Esrei and and Havdalah over wine. Which one are we talking about?

Rabbi Natan bar Ami, from 4th-century Mehoza, says that no work is allowed until you say Havdalah
over a cup of wine. He therefore he establishes that wine was available in the Saturday night situation
described in the Mishnah. But Rabbi Abba, from 5th-century Israel, says that the custom there was to
simply verbalize ha-mavdil bein kodesh le-hol and then begin doing work.

Wednesday, February 27, 2013

The Mishnah on Shabbat 143b presents a dispute about crushing honeycomb on Shabbat:

חלות דבש שריסקן מערב שבת ויצאו מעצמן - אסורין, ורבי אליעזר מתיר.

The Gemara on 145b (and in a similar discussion on 19b) notes that Rabbi Eliezer and the Sages have the same dispute as for olives and grapes, and explains why we might have thought that honeycomb should be more lenient.

Monday, February 25, 2013

Shabbat 143b through 145a addresses sehitah, the prohibition against squeezing on Shabbat. This came up on this blog once before.

The posekim debate how
this prohibition relates to making lemonade. At first glance, you might
think that making lemonade is a straightforward example of squeezing.
But God forbid that lemonade should be asur on Shabbat!

First, here are the basics that most rishonim
learn from the give-and-take on these pages of Gemara. (It happens to be
a relatively challenging give-and-take to follow, which is kind of unfair to Daf
Yomi learners on Purim weekend.) There are three type of fruit: grapes
and olives, which may not be squeezed mide-orayta; "tutim ve-rimonim," fruits which are commonly squeezed for juice, and may not be squeezed mide-rabbanan; and other fruits, which may be squeezed lekha-tehillah. That's most rishonim, including the Rif, Rambam, Semag and Rosh. and most Rashi, Tosafot, and the Semak are mahmir with that last one, and only allow squeezing a fruit if you do so to sweeten the fruit.

Ze'iri explains that only clear water and wine may be filtered, not cloudy water or wine. When challenged with a source that seems to allow cloudy wine, he explains that it refers to wine at the winepress.